New Author Spotlight: Daniel Suarez

New Author Spotlight is a series designed to introduce authors with up to 3 books in the different SF/F subgenres.

Today's spotlight shines on Daniel Suarez!

His books are:

• Daemon by Daniel Suarez (Signet)
• Freedom by Daniel Suarez (Signet)
• Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez (Dutton Adult)

Here's the cover copy for Daemon...

It all begins when one man's obituary appears online. . .

Matthew Sobol was a legendary computer game designer—the architect behind half a dozen popular online games. His premature death from brain cancer depressed both gamers and his company’s stock price. But Sobol’s fans weren’t the only ones to note his passing. He left behind something that was scanning Internet obituaries, too—something that put in motion a whole series of programs upon his death. Programs that moved money. Programs that recruited people. Programs that killed.

Confronted with a killer from beyond the grave, Detective Peter Sebeck comes face-to-face with the full implications of our increasingly complex and interconnected world—one where the dead can read headlines, steal identities, and carry out far-reaching plans without fear of retribution. Sebeck must find a way to stop Sobol’s web of programs—his Daemon—before it achieves its ultimate purpose. And to do so, he must uncover what that purpose is . . .

Check out these other books if you like evil computers and viruses.

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• Echelon by Josh Conviser (Del Rey)
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (Spectra)
• Erebos by Ursula Poznanski (Annick Press)

Momentum Books

Momentum Books is a digital only publisher, part of Pan MacMillan Australia.  They're DRM free and make their works available globally.  They've got a small selection of fantasy and science fiction.

I like the DRM free aspect of this publisher, but I think it's also important to point out its global nature.  Many justifications for pirating books center around cost and availability.  Momentum has priced their books between .99 and 9.99, with most at the 2.99 and 4.99 marks.  (Note, that's in Australian Dollars, so you have to factor in your local exchange rate.)  Just as importantly, allowing people from anywhere to buy their books means there's no excuse for not buying if they've published something you're interested in.

I became aware of this publisher through an email where they announced a prequel to a high selling series of theirs, Greig Beck's Alex Hunter series.

Here's the synopsis for the prequel:

Alex Hunter – in the mission that turned him from a normal man into the weapon known as the Arcadian – and the elite team of soldiers known as the Hotzone All-Forces Warfare Commandos must enter a hostile country to rescue a defected Chechen researcher from the center of a country at war.

But the HAWCs are not the only ones looking for the rogue scientist and the mysterious package he carries with him. A brutal and relentless killer and his death squad are on the trail too – and they bring a savagery with them Hunter and his team have never witnessed before in modern warfare.

In this stunning prequel to Beneath the Dark Ice, the HAWC team must race the clock to rescue the scientist, prevent the package from falling into the wrong hands … and save the world from a horror that should never have been woken.

Book Review: A Plunge Into Space by Robert Cromie

This is the first Singularity & Co. book kickstarter campaigners got once it was funded.  The company's idea is to  make ebooks of out of print SFF.

Pros: Mars?, historic significance

Cons: annoying characters, bad science, racist and sexist remarks

Henry Barnett's scientific breakthrough allows him and an interesting group of travellers to journey to Mars.

The opening of the book lends itself to a great mystery.  The scientific discovery is not explained for several chapters, allowing for the building of the ship they use to travel to Mars and the introduction of the rest of the characters.  But while it's myserious, it's also quite boring.  The characters, gathered in Alaska for the ship's completion, end up hunting and wasting time as setbacks have delayed the launch (not that they know there's a launch coming).

The cast consists of: Alexander MacGregor, an adventurer, always looking for the next undiscovered land.  Sir George Sterling, who finances the mission and is looking for a new source of speculation.  Walter Durand is an author, Victor Graves an artist, Frederick Gordon a special correspondent for a newspaper and Charles Blake, a politician.

It is this motley crew that travels to Mars, and you'd think, given their interests, that Mars would be a wonderful inspiration.  Alas, it's not.  The characters are soon quite bored with the wonders of the Red Planet, a response that simply baffles me (surely the artist could find SOMETHING interesting to paint on an alien planet).  And the other characters seem to complain that what they're interested in has already been done by the Martians or the Martians have no interest in (to which I scream: wouldn't their culture/history/science/politics be worth studying?).

The characters, all from the Commonwealth, have a disparaging view of everyone from Indians (Alaskan Natives in this case), women (on Mars - and apparently Earth given some of their comments), and Martians (calling them highly advanced in one breath while then pointing out their 'childish' practices the next).  Most of this is understandable given it's publication date, 1891, when such attitudes were the norm.  Still, modern readers will find their attitudes unpleasant.

The science is laughably bad now, but again, given the date of publication, was surprisingly advanced for the time.  Also consider that this book was published several years before H. G. Wells' The First Men on the Moon.

It's easy to see how people could read books like these and become interested in science and space.  But outside of an interest in the history of science fiction, this isn't a good read.

ChiZine Publications Will Launch a YA Imprint in 2014

From their press release:

Co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi announced today a new imprint for ChiZine Publications (CZP) to focus on Young Adult fiction. Called “ChiTeen,” the first title will be The Unlikely But Totally True Adventures of Floating Boy and Anxiety Girl by Paul Tremblay and Stephen Graham Jones, scheduled for release in spring 2014.

“As a business, you can’t ignore the young adult market,” says Savory. “Over the last decade, writers like Rowling, Gaiman and Collins were consistently on bestseller lists. We've been wanting to get into the YA market for a couple of years, and now the timing is right."

“Our editorial style lends itself to young adult fiction,” adds Kasturi. “CZP embraces the dark, the bizarre, the unusual. So many teens feel isolated or different and are looking for that outlet. ChiTeen will offer the same dark and weird stories with strong writing that CZP is known for, just with subject matter more suited for a younger audience.”

Kasturi and Savory will serve as ChiTeen’s co-publishers along with most of the CZP team. They are currently approaching authors to fill out their 2014 roster. They are not currently open to un-agented submissions for the new imprint.

As with CZP, distribution will be handled by HarperCollinsCanada in Canada and Diamond Book Distributors throughout the rest of the world. Foreign rights are handled by Cooke International.

Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi have been nominated for the 2012 World Fantasy Award, under the Special Award Professional category.  Several of their authors were nominated for the Prix Aurora Award and the Sunburst Award.  To find out more about ChiZine, check out its website.

Public Domain Short Story Reviews

I started reading these stories months ago and keep forgetting to post the reviews.  All of these stories are public domain, so free to read on the internet.  I found them in several places, but the best concentration is Gutenberg.org, followed by Many Books.net.  If you have an Apple device, there's a great book reader called 'Free Books'.  It's all public domain stuff and if you don't mind the ads, it's free.

Unlike my novel reviews, I decided to go with a star rating on the stories, as there isn't enough plot to do a pro/con for each one.  Five stars means the story was excellent in every way.  Four means it was very good.  Three is good, two is ok and one is mediocre.  I've dated the stories, then give a very short synopsis and my, rather condensed, thoughts on the story.

Some of the links are to the stories themselves, others are to where you can download the stories in multiple formats.

**** "Most Dangerous Game" - Richard Connell (1924)

Very creepy story about a hunter who washes up on a Caribbean island owned by a Russian aristocrat, who has discovered the best thing to hunt.

Even knowing what's coming, the story is creepy.  The actual hunt is less detailed than I'd have liked, given the fantastic set-up.

***** "Keep Out" - Fredric Brown (1954)

Altered humans form a new colony on Mars.

Chilling story.  It's short but carries a very forceful message.

*** "The Ultimate Experiment" - Thornton DeKy (1941)

A robot achieves what the last humans on Earth couldn't: creating new homo sapiens

A interesting premise narrated by the robot.

**** "2+2 Makes Crazy" by Walter Sheldon (1954)

A public liaison officer gives a man from the Information Department a tour around Computer City, showing him the computer that's increasingly running their world.

A plausible look both at the importance of computers in the world, and the paranoia of humans when dealing with the unknown/misunderstood.

***** "This World Must Die!" by Horace Brown Fyfe (1951)

Four convicts, individuals who have murdered, or tried to commit murder, are asked to do what no others in normal society are capable of: destroy a ship full of plague victims before it can reach the inhabited Mars.

A complex story that explores many angles of morality.  The convicts have no knowledge beside what they're told, have seen no plague victims and have dubious histories (not all of which are violent).  This one will make you think.

***** "Time and Time Again" by Henry Beam Piper (1947)

43 year old Allen Hartley is sedated after being injured in World War III.  He wakes up in his 12 year old body in 1945.

A time travel story that questions whether the past can - or should - be changed.

**** "The Prize of Peril" by Robert Sheckley (1960) [the site I got this story doesn't exist anymore, so I have removed the link]

A man slowly rises in the reality game show circuit to the top: trying to stay alive for a week while being hunted by a gang of thugs.

This is the last few hours of the Prize of Peril game show, and Jim Raeder is convinced he's a walking dead man, because for every 'good samaritan' who's willing to help him, there's another person screaming his location to the thugs he's trying to avoid.

It's an interesting look at what people are willing to risk in the hopes of earning a quick buck.  Reality TV didn't exist when this was written and yet you can see how even the man betting his life is so far removed from reality that it's only in the last few hours of the game that he questions what made him decide to play in the first place.  And what kind of society allowed this show to flourish.

Given the debate around The Hunger Games and Battle Royale recently, this is an interesting story to look at.  These premises - of humans killing humans for sport - are obviously not new.  And we're not as far from the gladiatorial arenas of ancient Rome as we'd like to think.

** "The Dunwich Horror" by H. P. Lovecraft (1929)

A small rural village has some bizarre goings on as a boy is born who grows up remarkably fast and who has a malignant aura, unleashes a horror on the locals.

Originally serialized, this story is a lot longer than it needs to be.  Narrated by a character who faces the horror, the story tells of Wilbur Whateley's birth and youth, and the odd things that happen at the farm where he lives with his mother and grandfather.  There's a lot of build up towards a dual climax, one dealing with the boy, the other with the horror he's conjured.  The plot is interesting but there's so much unnecessary description that reading it was fairly boring.  The horror elements are also subtle (as the creatures mentioned are only haphazardly described).

**** "The Call of Cthulhu" by H. P. Lovecraft (1928)

Written as an account by an unnamed man who discovers the existence of a terrifying creature living underwater after going through his great-uncle's papers and researching the matter himself.

This story was quite scary, both in its attempts to be scholarly and realistic, and in it's slow build up of evidence to support the existence of the Cthulhu Cult and the monster itself.  If you're interested in trying H. P. Lovecraft, start here.

Rock Jocks Movie Trailer

We stumbled across a movie trailer last night that looks pretty good.  Rock Jocks are the misfits who run the US government's covert Asteroid Management Initiative.  The AMI was started after an alien told the government that an asteroid belt would collide with earth.  The movie details the night shift of Rock Jocks dealing with boredom and the bureaucrat who's trying to cut their budget.

You can scroll through the cast list on their website, including Felicia Day (The Guild), Kevin Wu (KevJumba), Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager).

For more information about the film check out its website.

R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril VII (R.I.P.)

Lisa over at Starmetal Oak Reviews brought this to my attention by posting about it a few days ago.  The idea is to set a goal for yourself to read/watch something creepy during the months of September and October in order to get in the Halloween spirit.

Given that I've been working my way to free reading time (with a giant pile of books I've been dying to read) I'm not sure how much time I'll have to add in horror (you can also do dark fantasy, suspense, thriller, etc.).  But I'm sure I can read at least 2 books that fit the criteria (I've got Beyond by Graham McNamee on the shelf beside me and Lisa mentioned Breed, by Chase Novak, which I've heard of before and sounds interesting).  So that's:

I also highly suspect I'll be watching some horror movies in the coming months (several of the black and white films still on my list are the 30s Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, White Zombie, etc.  So I'll add:

If you're interested in joining or reading along with their book club, here's the website where you can add your blog to the blog roll and/or comment that you're participating and the site for reviews.